Betalogue

Newsweek technology writer Steven Levy makes a number of excellent points in his recent column entitled “iTunes and Lawsuits.” The recording industry is still desperately out of touch with the realities of today’s music buying experience, and it doesn’t sound like things will be improving any time soon.

I am glad to hear that Steve Jobs wants to have more than one million different tracks for sale by the end of the year, and is trying to make the point to the major labels that they have a golden opportunity to make money out of their enormous inventory of out-of-print music, by selling it at reasonable prices through on-line stores such as the iTunes Music Store, where manufacturing costs do not exist (except maybe for the need to clean up the sound for some recordings).

I am less glad to hear that Steve Jobs doesn’t appear to be doing much about improving compatibilty with third-party devices and stores and still refuses to license Apple’s protection scheme to others. And I don’t think I need to remind anyone that the iTunes Music Store is still not available outside the US.

So, progress on some fronts and stalemate on other fronts… It’s definitely a frustrating time for tech-savvy music lovers.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Thursday, May 6th, 2004 at 2:38 am and is filed under iTunes, Music, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.